Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Last summer, Whole Foods had the best tomatos near us.

eta: Still waiting for someone to explain Amazon's putative monopoly to me. FWIW, they clearly did not have a monopoly on the retail sale of tomatos in Santa Clara County last summer, but they were outcompeting their rivals on quality.

I mean, I think AWS holds a pretty big share of the cloud service market, but I don't know if it comes close to even 40%, and I don't think it's that hard to enter that particular market.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Last summer, Whole Foods had the best tomatos near us.

eta: Still waiting for someone to explain Amazon's putative monopoly to me. FWIW, they clearly did not have a monopoly on the retail sale of tomatos in Santa Clara County last summer, but they were outcompeting their rivals on quality.

I don't know about the tomato market, but when it comes to packages on our doorstep about 70% of them have been amazon through the pandemic. 70% is a lot of market concentration, and our doorstep is a pretty significant market.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I don't know about the tomato market, but when it comes to packages on our doorstep about 70% of them have been amazon through the pandemic. 70% is a lot of market concentration, and our doorstep is a pretty significant market.

70% market share is a monopoly in my book;
I do not believe that Amazon has anything close to 70% of stuff shipped in packages, which is to say that your house must be atypical;* and
Most of what Amazon can ship to you can also be bought in a store.

* Half of the cars in our driveway are VWs, but that doesn't mean that VW has 50% of the auto market.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

70% market share is a monopoly in my book;
I do not believe that Amazon has anything close to 70% of stuff shipped in packages, which is to say that your house must be atypical;* and
Most of what Amazon can ship to you can also be bought in a store.

* Half of the cars in our driveway are VWs, but that doesn't mean that VW has 50% of the auto market.

Yeah, their share of packages delivered to us is pretty high, but was significantly lower back peak pandemic when I was ordering groceries. And I pretty much completely stopped buying from them without significantly altering my consumption (wife on the other hand can't stop).

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

70% market share is a monopoly in my book;
I do not believe that Amazon has anything close to 70% of stuff shipped in packages, which is to say that your house must be atypical;* and
Most of what Amazon can ship to you can also be bought in a store.

* Half of the cars in our driveway are VWs, but that doesn't mean that VW has 50% of the auto market.

For purposes of antitrust laws, I think our house forms a separate geographic market for boxes on the step. It's likely a larger market than, for example, Rhode Island, which is just next door.

Also, do stores still actually exist? Huh. I thought they'd gone the way of the fax machine.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Yeah, their share of packages delivered to us is pretty high, but was significantly lower back peak pandemic when I was ordering groceries. And I pretty much completely stopped buying from them without significantly altering my consumption (wife on the other hand can't stop).

They have done an incredible job of building the infrastructure to deliver goods quickly and efficiently, in large part because they have made huge investments.

But most of the time it's not like anyone has to buy from them.* Their house brands have zero market power. Which is why you can stop buying from them completely.

Books aside, much of what I buy from Amazon are one-off purchases that save me from having to remember to make a trip to a store. That's convenience for me. but Amazon is still competing with a host of other people to make those sales.


* An exception is hard-to-find books, of which I probably buy more than most people, but I don't think that's what Sebby cares about. (What is Sebby's issue here? I wish he'd say.)

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

For purposes of antitrust laws, I think our house forms a separate geographic market for boxes on the step. It's likely a larger market than, for example, Rhode Island, which is just next door.

Also, do stores still actually exist? Huh. I thought they'd gone the way of the fax machine.

I clearly do not understand antitrust. My biggest client was gunshy about antitrust because a former firm had sued a small service company for patent infringement of a method of repair patent. Within a year that flipped into defending antitrust counterclaims.

So when we wanted to sue another big auto supplier for patent infringement of a transfer case patent HQ flew out DC antitrust counsel to bless the filing. I thought it routine, and no big deal. To get the patent we had to avoid a dozen prior systems that anyone could use.

DC guy says “no no no, if we define the market as the exact transfer cases covered by your patent this lawsuit is an attempt to monopolize,” or whatever the fuck it was we weren’t supposed to be doing.

Finally I just said “dude that would mean you should never file a patent lawsuit, and we should advise HQ to stop even getting patents.”

He kind of looked at the ground for a second then flew back home after blessing my case!

Define the market right (say Guernica posts) and I have a monopoly here. It is stuff and nonsense.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I clearly do not understand antitrust. My biggest client was gunshy about antitrust because a former firm had sued a small service company for patent infringement of a method of repair patent. Within a year that flipped into defending antitrust counterclaims.

So when we wanted to sue another big auto supplier for patent infringement of a transfer case patent HQ flew out DC antitrust counsel to bless the filing. I thought it routine, and no big deal. To get the patent we had to avoid a dozen prior systems that anyone could use.

DC guy says “no no no, if we define the market as the exact transfer cases covered by your patent this lawsuit is an attempt to monopolize,” or whatever the fuck it was we weren’t supposed to be doing.

Finally I just said “dude that would mean you should never file a patent lawsuit, and we should advise HQ to stop even getting parents.”

He kind of looked at the ground for a second then flew back home after blessing my case!

Define the market right (say Guernica posts) and I have a monopoly here. It is stuff and nonsense.

I feel your pain.

Anti trust in the pharma world is a strange brew. You can have cases where the way you settle a case to comply with an antitrust exception itself raises new antitrust issues (the "pay for delay" cases). But Ty can explain it all to you.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I don't know about the tomato market, but when it comes to packages on our doorstep about 70% of them have been amazon through the pandemic. 70% is a lot of market concentration, and our doorstep is a pretty significant market.

It's not as bad now, but the month before and the month after Kanan was born I think Amazon stopped at least twice a day.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

It's not as bad now, but the month before and the month after Kanan was born I think Amazon stopped at least twice a day.

Twice a day? Piker! If we were only getting deliveries twice a day the wife and I would have fat fingers from under use.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Define the market right (say Guernica posts) and I have a monopoly here. It is stuff and nonsense.

You don't have monopoly power for Guernica posts, because it's too easy for anyone else to enter. Sorry.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

DC guy says “no no no, if we define the market as the exact transfer cases covered by your patent this lawsuit is an attempt to monopolize,” or whatever the fuck it was we weren’t supposed to be doing.

Were you filing an objectively frivolous suit (not the exact language, as I haven't thought about that type of case for more than a decade)?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

It's not as bad now, but the month before and the month after Kanan was born I think Amazon stopped at least twice a day.

We have 3 adult kids living at home. Two deliveries happen by 8 am.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Adder

Were you filing an objectively frivolous suit (not the exact language, as I haven't thought about that type of case for more than a decade)?

I think the problem was the earlier case against the service company may have been driven by a desire to monopolize repair of a certain part, and the patent side might have been frivolous. My case was solid. It was just a big company afraid to have something blow up on them again.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I think the problem was the earlier case against the service company may have been driven by a desire to monopolize repair of a certain part, and the patent side might have been frivolous. My case was solid. It was just a big company afraid to have something blow up on them again.

There is a sort of tension between patent law and antitrust law, in that patent law is about getting the exclusive right to use a certain technology, and antitrust law is about preserving the benefits of competition. But that exclusive IP right is about an input to competition in a broader market. If you have the exclusive right to operate a ferry across a certain stretch of river, and someone builds a bridge there, you may still have an exclusive right to that technology, but you can't charge whatever you want because people might use the bridge instead. (But is the bridge made of cellophane, Adder?) Also, antitrust law says it's OK to get a monopoly if you do it by competing on the merits, which might mean building a better mousetrap and patenting it.